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Why ElementaryOS Left Medium

blog.elementary.io

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Re: Why ElementaryOS Left Medium

#51

Post by agluszak »

Santosh83 wrote: post #33
agluszak wrote: post #25

Yeah, so basically modals, banners, reminders to use the app etc. (vide https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/2019/06/... ) are new toolbars of the late 2010s ( http://i.imgur.com/X7ipc.png ). I don't like the direction where the Web is currently heading. Shutting down open APIs, forcing users to use the one and only official app (Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Reddit's starting to do so more and more),…

By use a diverse set of browsers and minimally using apps, we can slow down the silo'ing of the Internet. If users don't blindly buy into every app out there, big corps will have little choice but to interoperate on the open web.

But the big companies do everything that's possible to stop us from using browsers and plain, old websites. Users are not blind, but choosing not to conform to corps' will requires knowledge (why and how, because dark design patterns are called dark for a reason)

Re: Why ElementaryOS Left Medium

#52

Post by tonyedgecombe »

alanfranz wrote: post #10

My problem with Jekyll (or other static generators) is that it's not as straightforward as anything with a web gui, like wordpress or ghost (or medium or tumblr or...). You still need to handle things manually (e.g. the yaml front matter), the preview is not "out of the box", different plugins/extensions may add unpredictable behaviour, you need to setup a build/deploy pipeline, etc. - the experience is just not stre…

I always liked Joel Spolsky's CityDesk software. It's way out of date now but the basic principles were good. I'd love to find a modern equivalent.

Re: Why ElementaryOS Left Medium

#54

Post by ohithereyou »

javajosh wrote: post #45
agluszak wrote: post #25

Yeah, so basically modals, banners, reminders to use the app etc. (vide https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/2019/06/... ) are new toolbars of the late 2010s ( http://i.imgur.com/X7ipc.png ). I don't like the direction where the Web is currently heading. Shutting down open APIs, forcing users to use the one and only official app (Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Reddit's starting to do so more and more),…

Well, the fundamental problem is that Capital comes in and builds a really great Thing, a Thing that may not have been built without Capital, but then Capital wants a Return, which causes the Thing to decay. The thing Hackers can do, as in the OPs article, is to salvage the good ideas that the initial efforts of Capital managed to prove, and leave out the rest. This won't work for individuals, in general, because wri…

>Consider all the market validation they did, for you, for me, for free. Consider all the product design work they did, for all of us, for free.

I have a feeling that their intent wasn't to do it for free. What happened is that they couldn't gather enough information about their users to turn a profit. Yes, that's what capital does, but the end result was not free for any of its users - they gave up personal data to use it.

Re: Why ElementaryOS Left Medium

#55

Post by giancarlostoro »

agluszak wrote: post #25

Yeah, so basically modals, banners, reminders to use the app etc. (vide https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/2019/06/... ) are new toolbars of the late 2010s ( http://i.imgur.com/X7ipc.png ). I don't like the direction where the Web is currently heading. Shutting down open APIs, forcing users to use the one and only official app (Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Reddit's starting to do so more and more),…

Improve existing platforms: Wordpress, Ghost, etc.

There's none of that nonsense on those open source platforms.

An aside: Tumblr isn't hostile like Medium is. At least not last I used it. I prefer seeing Tumblr to medium you can really just do any kind of blog you want whether it's a meme feed, or some serious blogging.

Edit: Forgot to add, also Tumblr lets you optionally advertise to non-logged in users to join Tumblr, and it's not a modal, just a button on the top right hand corner where the "Follow" button shows up to logged in users, or you can hide it entirely.

Re: Why ElementaryOS Left Medium

#56

Post by thelittleone »

pjc50 wrote: post #47
thelittleone wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As users, a step in the right direction would be to vote with your wallet, not use nasty services and prefer respectful services wherever possible. I'd love an app where I could define companies, people and perhaps countries I don't want to pay so that I'm notified when browsing to a site, or scanning a product to buy so that my time and money could be invested elsewhere.

Adblocking is a good start. For physical products .. it's a lot harder. I don't want to go full "no ethical consumption under capitalisim", since that's useless, but basically everything that isn't specifically marketed as ethical probably is doing something wrong in the supply chain somewhere, and half of the "ethical" claims are dubious too.

> I don't want to go full "no ethical consumption under capitalism"

True but one step at a time in the right direction is all it takes for change. Say if I got shafted by Expedia. I would like to add them to my "do not buy" list and have their other brands (e.g. orbitz, travelocity etc) added to the do not buy list. Could make it social so that if my sister got shafted by some company I could see that too and opt for an alternative. There are often stories about unethical companies (Monsanto for example which is now owned by Bayer). I'd like to avoid them, but the burden of doing so prevents it. Lower that burden, provide alternatives and maybe over time we'd see improved ethics and accountability.

Re: Why ElementaryOS Left Medium

#57

Post by zimbatm »

alanfranz wrote: post #10

My problem with Jekyll (or other static generators) is that it's not as straightforward as anything with a web gui, like wordpress or ghost (or medium or tumblr or...). You still need to handle things manually (e.g. the yaml front matter), the preview is not "out of the box", different plugins/extensions may add unpredictable behaviour, you need to setup a build/deploy pipeline, etc. - the experience is just not stre…

The main issue with Jekyll is the blog post system. It requires all the blog posts to live under `_posts/-.md`. So now the user has to invoke a command-line tool to create the proper slug. Then if the post doesn't get published on the same day or the title changes the user has to rename the filename. Images live in a different folder and get all put together.

A better implementation would be: render all the markdown files in the repository and map README.md to index.html. Now you can create your own file structure, have your images with the article, and optionally add them to the RSS feed by adding a `published_at` in the frontmatter. Or even better use the git history to find out when it was added (and changed) in the repo. You get all the "admin" and rendering for free from GitHub.

I guess my point is that there is a lot of friction inherent to Jekyll's blog post publishing system. Since I adopted that other approach it's much easier for me. I love to only focus on the text and not worry about the rendering. And be able to edit it with my favourite text editor.

Re: Why ElementaryOS Left Medium

#59

Post by wastedhours »

yoz-y wrote: post #24
kryptiskt wrote: post #4

Every time I follow a link to Medium they seem to get more and more pushy. I shy away from clicking on links there anymore, so news like this is welcome. I must say I don't get what unique value proposition Medium think they have that allows them to treat both publishers and readers like crap.

> I must say I don't get what unique value proposition Medium think they have that allows them to treat both publishers and readers like crap. My take is that they had a unique value proposition at the beginning: "YouTube for text: audience and authors all at the same place, with recommendations and unified comment platform". But then it became apparent that they will not magically become profitable or bought, so the…

The problem is, with a lot of companies trying to be "YouTube for X", they left out the monetisation stories.

The reason a lot of creators have bought into YouTube is 1) it's still expensive to host video elsewhere 2) there's constant noise around the earning potential (as misguided as it might be to listen to it).

Medium doesn't have the depth of content to become a destination wholly in and of itself as they don't have a critical mass of creation. All they needed to do was allow creators to make some decent cash, get a few wild "this author is earning a $1m a year, just on Medium!!11!1!1" stories into the mainstream, and suddenly you'll have an influx. Then, just don't be a complete arse to those creators and keep the cash pumping.

I don't really want more ads in the ether, but that would have been the most obvious way to juice it - have their own self-serve ad product from ad one, and the offer the options to remove down the line.

Instead, we get dialogue boxes.

Re: Why ElementaryOS Left Medium

#60

Post by chris_wot »

SahAssar wrote: post #43
agluszak wrote: post #25

Yeah, so basically modals, banners, reminders to use the app etc. (vide https://www.webdesignerdepot.com/cdn-origin/uploads/2019/06/... ) are new toolbars of the late 2010s ( http://i.imgur.com/X7ipc.png ). I don't like the direction where the Web is currently heading. Shutting down open APIs, forcing users to use the one and only official app (Facebook Messenger, Instagram, Reddit's starting to do so more and more),…

> How can we - users, programmers, hackers - fight this? By doing exactly what ElementaryOS did here: stop using these platforms. And if you have to use them (as a user), try to use them in the most open way possible: Never via a dedicated app, preferably via RSS or similar for the platforms where it is suitable and where it is supported (like youtube).

This is correct. The readers should not be the ones paying for this, it should be the publishers who use the platform.
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